As the international crisis of capitalism deepens, Minneapolis is under siege by state terror—and the working class is fighting back. In a city of less than half a million residents, more than three thousand federal shock troops have been given free rein to detain, arrest, brutalize, and murder any who cross their path. Over a span of 17 days, the paramilitary thugs of ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol executed a mother of three and an ICU nurse for the capital crime of protest. (So much for the bosses’ fake “freedoms” of speech and assembly!) Renee Good and Alex Pretti are just two of the latest casualties of the rulers’ vicious drive to scapegoat immigrants for the profit system’s failures and the plight of a waning and desperate U.S. empire. Thirteen workers have been shot by trigger-happy agents since last September, including Silverio Villegas Gonzales, a line cook near Chicago who tried to flee a traffic stop, and Keith Porter, a father of two gunned down in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve (themarshallproject.org, 1/26). The killings of Good and Pretti-both white workers-also show that no worker is safe from this racist terror.
But even under siege, Minneapolis is once again showing the world how to stand up against gutter racism and sanctioned state violence. While the liberal mayor and governor and police chief make useless pleas for “peace,” thousands of heroic workers have mobilized to defend and protect each other while standing up to the death squads dispatched by State-Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump. On January 23, tens of thousands marched downtown and hundreds of businesses closed in a general strike (democracynow.org, 1/26). In these selfless acts of working-class solidarity, in the hard lessons we are learning, there is a glimpse of a communist future—of a new and better world. It’s never been clearer that the working class must break free of the chaos and callous oppression of capitalism. It’s never been clearer that the liberal capitalist misleaders have nothing to offer us. Fighting the rise of fascism shoulder to shoulder, and led by the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party, we will build the communist world our class deserves.
Why we are under assault
Minneapolis is feeling the bloody brunt of an empire’s decline. As U.S. imperialism competes for dwindling global resources against a rising China and other rivals, it has splintered into two bitterly warring factions. The Big Fascists of finance capital, the multinational banks and oil companies, still seek global domination through endless, far-flung war and a nuclear-girded network of 750 overseas military bases (globalstatistics.com). The domestically based Small Fascists behind Trump, as they move to restore a more isolated Fortress America, have a cheaper plan for plunder.
Case in point: the U.S. oil grab in Venezuela. While the two sides have different strategies and tactics, both are faced with a system that’s drowning in debt and squeezing workers’ standard of living. Both sides must rely on racist terror to keep workers in line and also to divide them.
Both sides, in short, are being forced to turn to fascism, a phase of capitalism that strips off the mask of liberal democracy and reveals the rotten core beneath.
This is the context for the federal government’s declaration of war on immigrant workers. While Trump has a long way to go to beat Barack Obama’s 5.3 million deportations and “repatriations” of migrating workers, or Joe Biden’s single-year record of 1.5 million (newsweek.com, 1/15), his no-holds-barred agenda marks a qualitative escalation. The ICE goons in combat gear are being recruited with naked appeals to white nationalism and wink-wink tropes familiar to the Proud Boys and other nazi groups in the U.S. and Germany (New York Times, 1/27). It can be no surprise that they’re freely assaulting people in parking lots, dragging them from their cars—or shooting them when they get the opportunity. ICE agents are casing schools and daycare centers. In one horrific case, they snatched a five-year-old child and used him as bait to lure family members from their home before shipping the boy and his father to a Texas concentration camp for deportation (NYT, 1/22). Locked and loaded with live ammunition, stun grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray, these masked cowards have turned Minneapolis into a class war zone.
Occupied but not defeated
Though the terror is real, so is the collective response of the working class. Growing groups of workers are forming parent patrols around schools. Watch groups are alerting their immigrant neighbors to ICE’s presence and bringing food to those too terrified to go outside. Each day they are chasing ICE vans, confronting the thugs with whistles and an emerging multiracial class consciousness.
Falling back on skills and connections gained in the George Floyd resistance and then the fightback against genocide in Gaza, the working class in Minneapolis has built a broad and inspiring movement. They aren’t focused on the dead end of voting in the next election. With advanced antiracist politics, they are defying both Trump and the equally dangerous reformist misleaders (The Guardian 1/2). The workers’ collective will and commitment were on display on January 23, when thousands braved frigid temperatures to take to the streets after the murder of Alex Pretti. The deafening message from that day remains clear: Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!
The enemy of our enemy is our enemy
Even as Trump’s forces use a racist welfare investigation to target their Democratic Party rivals and migrating workers from Somalia, we can’t lose sight of a hard fact: The Democrats are no friends of ours. Just as most of them, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, stood opposed to defunding the police who killed George Floyd and so many others, they now have no intention of abolishing ICE (NYT, 1/15). In essence, these are the same liberal racists who built the foundation for Trump’s ethnic cleansing machine, dating back to the Illegal Immigration Responsibility Act that Bill Clinton signed in 1996. Under Obama, the Democrats built the razor-wire-topped cages for migrating workers and children—the same inhuman holding pens that Trump used in his first term (politifact.com, 9/13/19).
Whoever wins the next rounds of U.S. elections, we know that capitalism can never be reformed to meet the needs of the working class. The politicians will still lie as they serve their billionaire masters. The cops will still be brutal. And the working class will continue to suffer. But there is another solution to put the state terrorists out of business for all time: communist revolution.
Organize to stop ICE, fight for communism
Workers understand that we can’t stop ICE with whistles and snowballs and cell phone cameras. Though there will be cheers if and when Trump’s gestapo leaves Minnesota, we all know they’ll be off to terrorize workers someplace else. Capitalism is built on the exploitation and oppression of workers everywhere, from Minnesota to Gaza and Sudan and Tehran. No capitalists, no matter how much they hate other capitalists, can rescue us from fascism and inter-imperialist war. To build a world without bosses and borders—a communist world—we can rely only on our class. That is the lesson we learn in the struggle. Organize ICE Watch and fight for communism! Organize food distributions and fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party and fight for communism!
